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Boot Camp on Mac Pro 3,1 - cannot install Windows

N

nigelbb

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 22, 2012
1,158
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I have never wanted to install Windows on my 3,1 but am now forced to so that I can flash the GTX680 I have just acquired however I am having no success at all in running Boot Camp & installing Windows.
I have an ISO image of Windows 7 Professional x64 downloaded from MSDN & it has been used to install Windows on a PC.

After an incredibly frustrating time trying to unsuccessfully install from a USB flash drive I eventually burned this ISO to a DVD & I if I Option boot I get both Windows & EFI Boot among my options but neither works as the DVD whirrs for a bit the screen goes black & the system just sits there.

Any ideas on what the problem is? I installed a clean version of El Capitain on a disk in a drive sled booted from that drive & used Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows partition. When this is completed the system reboots presumably it's supposed to boot off the Windows DVD install disk but as above the disk whirrs the screen dos black & then... nothing.....
 
It's either your ISO, or your probably burning the ISO at the wrong speed, I was having the same issue, you must burn the ISO at the slowest speed. Hope this helps!
 
devon807 said:
It's either your ISO, or your probably burning the ISO at the wrong speed, I was having the same issue, you must burn the ISO at the slowest speed. Hope this helps!
Click to expand...
The ISO is OK it's been used to install Windows on a PC a few years ago
Not sure how to change the burn speed. I just right click on the ISO & select Burn.
What should I see after the reboot from the DVD? The Apple Help is a mish-mash of misinformation mostly rferencing Windows 8 not Windows 7.
 
You should burn the disk via disk utility, and it should reboot into the installer for Windows 7. For burning the disk, in disk utility, you must burn the image at the lowest speed possible, it should be in a drop down menu.
 
devon807 said:
You should burn the disk via disk utility, and it should reboot into the installer for Windows 7. For burning the disk, in disk utility, you must burn the image at the lowest speed possible, it should be in a drop down menu.
Click to expand...
There is no option to burn a disk in the new improved El Capitain version of Disk Utility.
 
nigelbb said:
There is no option to burn a disk in the new improved El Capitain version of Disk Utility.
Click to expand...

Wow, didn't know that. Apple really have done a number on Disk Utility haven't they. No burning disks, no RAID support, can't resize the window, the list goes on.

Fortunately there are still a few other ways you can burn disk images in OS X 10.11.x.
 
I just booted up off a Mountain Lion install USB key & ran the old unimproved Disk Utility where I was able to choose 4X burn speed rather than the default maximum 18X speed. I'll check it out again in the morning.
 
Last edited:
nigelbb said:
I just booted up off a Mountain Lion install USB key & ran the old unimproved Disk Utility where I was able to choose 4X burn speed rather than the default maximum 18X speed. I'll check it out again in the morning.
Click to expand...
This should work, unless the burn does not complete successfully
 
Sadly the 4x burn DVD doesn't boot either. I have access to another Mac Pro so I shall give that a whirl. I shall also dig out another Windows 7 installation DVD. Failing that it looks like I can buy a genuine DVD off eBay for about £25.
 
Try and hold the "C" key at startup, or hold option at startup and see if you can select the Windows DVD.

if I Option boot I get both Windows & EFI Boot among my options but neither works as the DVD whirrs for a bit the screen goes black & the system just sits there.

EDIT:Sorry I didn't see this the first time.

When you were trying to install via USB, did you use BootCamp to create the USB stick?

Would it boot Windows from the USB stick?

You could try to download VirtualBox and use your Windows .ISO to install Windows in a virtual machine, then use Rufus to create a Windows 7 USB stick.
 
Last edited:
OK, I haven't progressed much. The DVD drive had died in the other Mac Pro 3, 1 & I seem to run round & round in circles with trying to create a bootable USB stick. I cannot get either the Mac Pro or my old 2008 MacBook Pro 4,1 to boot off a USB stick. Is it even possible? I have now burned DVDs at slow speed on a Windows machine & confirmed that the DVDs are bootable on that Windows machine. I'll be back home tomorrow so will give the original Mac Pro 3,1 a go with the DVD.
 
DearthnVader said:
You could try to download VirtualBox and use your Windows .ISO to install Windows in a virtual machine, then use Rufus to create a Windows 7 USB stick.
Click to expand...
I just used Rufus on the Windows laptop to create a bootable USB stick & confirmed that the Windows system booted from it. However neither my Mac Pro 3,1 nor my MacBook Pro 4,1 will boot from the USB stick & in fact it's not even seen as a bootable drive when doing an Option boot.

I have reached the conclusion that the Mac Pro 3,1 cannot boot from a USB flash drive. Does anyone have evidence otherwise?
 
nigelbb said:
I just used Rufus on the Windows laptop to create a bootable USB stick & confirmed that the Windows system booted from it. However neither my Mac Pro 3,1 nor my MacBook Pro 4,1 will boot from the USB stick & in fact it's not even seen as a bootable drive when doing an Option boot.

I have reached the conclusion that the Mac Pro 3,1 cannot boot from a USB flash drive. Does anyone have evidence otherwise?
Click to expand...

It seems Rufus will only create USB sticks with Master Boot Record partition maps and Intel Macs need GUID/GPT partition maps to boot from USB.

Does BootCamp give you the option to create a USB stick from the Windows 7 ISO?

I'm running El Capitan and it doesn't give me that option, anymore.

If so, they and partition the USB stick with Disk Utility as GUID, then run BootCamp.
 
There seems to be an issue with my MP 3,1 booting from the Windows 7 DVD. I burned various copies of various ISOs (Home,Ultimate,Professional) on a Windows machine & confirmed that they were all bootable. The DVD is seen as EFI & Windows when I Option Boot but whichever I select the drive just whirrs for a while but the screen remains black. The graphics card is the original ATI Radeon 2600. It looks like I am SOL on installing Windows on this dual 3.2GHz MP 3,1 but I do have another dual 2.8GHz MP 3,1 to try when I put the good DVD drive in.
 
nigelbb said:
There seems to be an issue with my MP 3,1 booting from the Windows 7 DVD. I burned various copies of various ISOs (Home,Ultimate,Professional) on a Windows machine & confirmed that they were all bootable. The DVD is seen as EFI & Windows when I Option Boot but whichever I select the drive just whirrs for a while but the screen remains black. The graphics card is the original ATI Radeon 2600. It looks like I am SOL on installing Windows on this dual 3.2GHz MP 3,1 but I do have another dual 2.8GHz MP 3,1 to try when I put the good DVD drive in.
Click to expand...
What DVD's are you using?
 
one option for flashing your card download and burn the free dos cd create a small fat32 partition on one of your drives dump the dos flasher and rom file there thats what I did for my ATI HD 4870
 
Problem solved... It turns out that you can't install Windows when there is more than one graphics card in the Mac Pro so I installed with just a basic GT120. I installed from an Lacie external DVD drive initially connected by Firewire which did boot from the DVD but then failed with an error that there was no boot device. It appears that you cannot install Windows 7 from a DVD connected by Firewire so I swapped to USB & all went well. I had to Option Boot & select the Bootcamp partition a couple of times but eventually it was all working.

I then added the GTX680 but unlike OS X it seems that Windows 7 cannot handle two dissimilar graphics cards & there was no display from the GTX680 although nvflash did see two graphics cards I decided that I would prefer to flash with just the GTX680 installed. I did download & install the GTX680 Windows 7 drivers from Nvidia then rebooted with just the GTX680 installed to confirm that it was all working with my main monitor a 30" HP LP3065 with 2560x1600 resolution.

I downloaded the Mac GTX680 BIOS from https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-680-mac-edition.1565735/page-5#post-17132316
I downloaded nvflash from http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2563/nvflash-5-227-0-1-for-windows/

I ran nvflash from the command prompt & had to change the filename of the BIOS from gtx680mac.bin to gtx680mac.rom before nvflash would accept the file. The commands I used were

nvflash -b mygtx680.rom
to do the backup then
nvflash -4 -5 -6 gtx680mac.rom
to do the actual flash
I had to enter y a press return couple of times.
The actual flash only took a few seconds & at first I wasn't sure that anything had happened as nvflash pops up another command window which disappears so quickly when the command completes that ou don't get the opportunity to read any success or failure message.
When I rebooted into Windows I saw the grey EFI screen so knew my flash had been successful. Windows then came up in VGA mode & needed to install new hardware & do another reboot before the full resolution was displayed again.

I am pleased to have sorted this all out eventually & have Windows installed on a partition on a spare disk with barebones El Capitain in the other partition. I have no want or need to use Windows but I will keep the disk on the shelf when I need to flash another GTX680.

The card I flashed was an EVGA GeForce GTX 680 FTW 2048MB 02G-P4-3686-KR not previously reported as flashable but looks identical to the other EVGA cards based on the reference design. So far I have it working with 2 x DVI but will be able to test in a couple of days with HDMI & DisplayPort. The Mac Edition GTX680 will work with all four interfaces simultaneously & I expect my flashed card to do so too.
 
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